Intel To Acquire McAfee
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 19th Aug 2010 17:54 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
Intel Chalk this one up on the 'uh, what?'-list of acquisitions. Intel announced today that it has acquired Mcafee, the security and antivirus company we all know and love. The press release is a bit vague on why, exactly, Intel made this rather odd acquisition.
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RE[2]: anti fail
by leech on Thu 19th Aug 2010 22:14 UTC in reply to "RE: anti fail"
leech
Member since:
2006-01-10

"Would be better if people were start using linux instead of paying for companies like mcafee for their crapware.


Linux is not immune to malware, especially if you allow and run random programs downloaded from the internet on your system. A stupid Windows user can be a "just as stupid" Linux user. "

Except you have to be at least educated enough to know 'chmod +x' to anything you just download off the internet.

Then at least they'll only hose their own data, and as well they should, but it'd be difficult for a normal 'stupid' user to make his PC into a zombie for spammers for example.

Still, Linux is at the stage right now where even if some "stupid windows user" decided to use it instead of Windows, it'd more than likely because their Windows install has become crap because of malware one too many times, so they should be at least a bit more cautious when switching to Linux. But then again, most people at this point who switch to Linux are recommended to do so by a Linux user. So will hopefully be informed of such basic things.

Reply Parent Score: 1

RE[3]: anti fail
by sakeniwefu on Fri 20th Aug 2010 01:47 in reply to "RE[2]: anti fail"
sakeniwefu Member since:
2008-02-26


Except you have to be at least educated enough to know 'chmod +x' to anything you just download off the internet.


Britney_Spears_nude.tar.gz
|-> extract to...
Britney_Spears_nude_001.jpg rwxr-xr-x 1 1 10021
*Double click*

And, if some day the distros make the home partition noexec by default, make that Porn_Downloader.deb or Ubuntu_Antivirus_2011.deb which is only a bit less likely to convince the victim and gives the malware root access.


Then at least they'll only hose their own data, and as well they should, but it'd be difficult for a normal 'stupid' user to make his PC into a zombie for spammers for example.


Malware only needs to take over the user. root permissions aren't necessary to send mails or to open ports to receive instructions.

Reply Parent Score: 4

RE[4]: anti fail
by gireesh on Fri 20th Aug 2010 10:45 in reply to "RE[3]: anti fail"
gireesh Member since:
2005-07-24

Well said. Not only that, even with just user access rights your data can go bye bye. I consider that to be an often overlooked aspect when people talk about linux security.

Reply Parent Score: 1

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